Not Constantinople

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this up here! Got back Tuesday from my long weekend in Istanbul with my friend, Natalie. I had a really great time and Istanbul definitely ranks up there in my favorite cities.

We both arrived in the Istanbul airport around noon on Saturday (I arrived from Bucharest, Natalie from Geneva). After a relatively easy tram ride downtown, we checked into our “hotel”, which was barely a step up from a hostel. We spent that afternoon/evening at a restaurant down the street, watching Germany destroy Argentina and catching up (it’d been a year since we’d last seen each other).

The next day, we hit up most of the major attractions in Istanbul. We started with the Blue Mosque, since our hotel was right across the street from it. It’s really pretty hard to describe how massive the outside of this mosque is and its position in the skyline of Istanbul. The inside was beautiful, though less impressive than how it looks outside. While this wasn’t the first mosque I’d been in, it always surprises me a little to see the fence that separates the area where women are allowed and where they’re not. And the small patch in the back where Muslim women were allowed to pray. No commentary, just interesting. Next, we headed over to Istanbul’s most famous attraction – the Aya Sofya. This was the opposite of the Blue Mosque – I wasn’t a fan of the outside, but the inside was by far the most interesting building I’ve ever seen. Built in the 6th century by the Byzantines to serve as a church, it was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman takeover. Nowadays, it’s a museum, but it looks like a mosque with mosaics of Jesus all over the place. It’s also a massive building with no support columns. And my favorite part was the kitten that was “sunbathing” in the spotlight at the altar. Next, we headed under the city to the underground cisterns. Basically, it’s where the water supply was for a really long time. Now it’s a massive, creepy, dark space covered in water and columns. There are also two Medusa heads that no one knows where came from. It was a pretty interesting space. That night, we hung out at a small restaurant by our hotel and enjoyed a Turkish Delight (nasty candy) flavored hookah.

The next day was primarily devoted to shopping at the Grand Bazaar, which is absolutely massive – over 4,000 shops and employs over 30,000 people. Though primarily for tourists nowadays, it was created in like the 6th century. Natalie and I had a good time trying to avoid all the really pushy shop owners. They enjoy yelling out what nationality they think you are (the strangest we got was Japanese, though German was more common) and asking if Natalie (who’s 6’1” and rail thin) and I were sisters. After a morning of that, we headed over to another mosque, which was closed for renovation and ended up at a restaurant inhabited completely by locals and where no one on the wait staff spoke English. That was interesting; still not entirely sure what I ordered/ate. Then we stopped by Istanbul University, which is massive, with over 60,000 undergraduate students. We finished off the day by attempting (and failing) to go on a Bosphorus River cruise, and ended up instead at the Galata Tower, which gave us a fabulous view of the city.

The next day, we only had a couple of hours to sightsee before having to head to the airport. Spent the morning at the Spice Bazaar and some really ritzy Turkish Delight shops, had another excellent meal and headed out.

I think my favorite thing about Istanbul was all the kitties everywhere. So cute!

Anyway, Stephen comes in two days (yay!). Then I move the suburbs for 3 weeks. Then I've decided to take the train to Sofia, Bulgaria and Belgrade, Serbia for that last week before I come home. Not that far off, strangely!